Mitchell Hashimoto fb9c52ecf4 Nuke GLFW from Orbit
This deletes the GLFW apprt from the Ghostty codebase.

The GLFW apprt was the original apprt used by Ghostty (well, before
Ghostty even had the concept of an "apprt" -- it was all just a single
application then). It let me iterate on the core terminal features,
rendering, etc. without bothering about the UI. It was a good way to get
started. But it has long since outlived its usefulness.

We've had a stable GTK apprt for Linux (and Windows via WSL) and a
native macOS app via libghostty for awhile now. The GLFW apprt only
remained within the tree for a few reasons:

  1. Primarily, it provided a faster feedback loop on macOS because
     building the macOS app historically required us to hop out of the
     zig build system and into Xcode, which is slow and cumbersome.

  2. It was a convenient way to narrow whether a bug was in the
     core Ghostty codebase or in the apprt itself. If a bug was in both
     the glfw and macOS app then it was likely in the core.

  3. It provided us a way on macOS to test OpenGL.

All of these reasons are no longer valid. Respectively:

  1. Our Zig build scripts now execute the `xcodebuild` CLI directly and
     can open the resulting app, stream logs, etc. This is the same
     experience we have on Linux. (Xcode has always been a dependency of
     building on macOS in general, so this is not cumbersome.)

  2. We have a healthy group of maintainers, many of which have access
     to both macOS and Linux, so we can quickly narrow down bugs
     regardless of the apprt.

  3. Our OpenGL renderer hasn't been compatible with macOS for some time
     now, so this is no longer a useful feature.

At this point, the GLFW apprt is just a burden. It adds complexity
across the board, and some people try to run Ghostty with it in the real
world and get confused when it doesn't work (it's always been lacking in
features and buggy compared to the other apprts).

So, it's time to say goodbye. Its bittersweet because it is a big part
of Ghostty's history, but we've grown up now and it's time to move on.
Thank you, goodbye.

(NOTE: If you are a user of the GLFW apprt, then please fork the project
prior to this commit or start a new project based on it. We've warned
against using it for a very, very long time now.)
2025-07-04 14:12:18 -07:00
..
2025-06-20 15:18:41 -06:00
2024-08-16 16:28:39 -07:00

Packages

This folder contains packages written for and used by Ghostty that could potentially be useful for other projects. These are in-tree with Ghostty because I don't want to maintain them as separate projects (i.e. get dedicated issues, PRs, etc.). If you want to use them, you can copy and paste them into your project.

License

This license only applies to the contents of the pkg folder within the Ghostty project. This license does not apply to the rest of the Ghostty project.

Copyright © 2024 Mitchell Hashimoto, Ghostty contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.